Musicology / Music History Cluster
This cluster involves faculty from Rochester's Eastman School of Music, Syracuse's Department of Fine Arts and the Rose, Jules R. and Stanford S. Setnor School of Music, and Cornell's Department of Music, who will collaboratively facilitate workshops, centers, interdisciplinary projects and faculty exchanges that share the resources available at each institution.
The Central New York region has an especially rich and ethnically diverse musical tradition, and accordingly the three universities have outstanding groups of faculty in music, musicology, and music history, as well as unique resources in a variety of areas. The Eastman School of Music (affiliated with University of Rochester) stands among the very top-ranked programs in musicology in the country. At Syracuse, the School of Music in Visual and Performing Arts (emphasizing composition and performance) and the Department of Fine Arts in Arts and Sciences (containing music historians) have been identified as institutional priorities by both the deans and by Chancellor Cantor. Moreover, Syracuse has in the past year developed the endowed Goldring Arts Journalism Program, hosted jointly by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, the College of Visual and Performing Arts, the School of Architecture, and The College of Arts and Sciences; its mission is to elevate the quality of reporting on the arts in America. Music is a central component of that initiative.
As in the Cultures and Religions cluster, Musicology/Music History is a focal area in which our regional university library archives present a strong catalyst for the faculty initiative.
At Rochester, the Sibley music library at Eastman is the largest academic music library in North America and contains numerous special collections.
At Syracuse, the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive is one of the four largest archives of recorded sound in the country, and is particularly rich in holdings from the early period of sound recording - holdings that have yet to be the subjects of serious scholarly inquiry. The Belfer also houses a large collection of early playback technologies, including Victrolas and cylinder machines - a collection that has great potential for study in its own right.
The Cornell University Music Library has unusually rich holdings, including the library of the eminent musicologist Donald J. Grout, which contains an extensive collection of original scores and printed libretti extending from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. In summary, these audio, manuscript, and print archives form an exceptional scholarly resource in support of this cluster. Cornell University will host the New York the New York.
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Andy Waggoner
Associate Professor
Music
Collaborative initiatives in this area may arise as interdisciplinary centers in a variety of forms. Interests exist in the areas such as the music of American communities, in archiving and disseminating indigenous and immigrant musics, in creating entities such as centers to study the history of recorded sound, and in studying the history of music and spectacle.
Part of the uniqueness of the music cluster lies in its juxtaposition of
both creative and scholarly work, with analytical and historical
analysis dovetailing naturally with the commission of new works and
performance of lesser-known works from the standard repertoire. This
dual focus is apparent in the cluster's kick-off event, Music, Justice,
and Gender, which will include scholarly fora and a new commissioned
string quartet from composer Judith Lang Zaimont, played by the Harlem
Quartet. |
